Final Thoughts

I never would have anticipated an online course could do more for me than a typical course where I had face-to-face contact with my professor. It is extremely admirable that you were able to respond quickly and thoroughly to the questions that arose in and out of class. Surprisingly, I knew more about the assignments; your expectations and their respective due dates than I do for most of my regular classes. Consequently, the first valuable thing I learned was the fact that communication can function across several different channels; in our case, the computer served as the medium. Not only that, but communication can function more efficiently in some aspects. The assignments were clearly stated so nothing was misconstrued, and I was afforded the ability to reference back to any assignment since they were all documented on my computer. Rather then having to listen to a lecture, interpret the main points, and take notes for future use, I was able to bypass one step because the lecture was already in note form. The interpretation was done for me. While emails and weblog were used frequently to answer questions, I felt the driving factor behind the success of this form of communication was the set meeting time on the discussion board. The live interaction allowed for questions to arise that I never would have thought to ask had I not been amongst my other classmates. I felt the virtual meeting time gave the class more substance, and added another dimension to the term, “online course.” I also liked the fact that the class was not completely self-paced. There was some flexibility in completing assignments, but the checkpoints along the way kept me on task, and I feel that I achieved more in the time allotted than I would have if assignments dates were left solely up to me.

The format of the course taught me a valuable lesson. However, the actual content of the course succeeded in teaching me two other extremely important things. Before this course, technical writing was something I thought all majors could benefit from. All majors except for mine that is. Graphic communications had no place for technical writing. In graphics, we are all about our customers; meeting them in person on a regular basis to gather their concepts and “pitch” our ideas. The only writing we do is the writing for our advertisements. While this is correct in some aspects, I never realized that advertisement copy was a form of technical communication. I was using this type of writing every day without ever noticing. This class has allowed me to see the usefulness technical writing brings to a company and the potential it has for competitively positioning that company. Through the interview assignment and my research for the individual class proposal project, I was able to document physical evidence of technical writing’s presence in the graphics industry.

Upon completion of the job search document assignment, I took away two working resumes for two completely different careers. I never understood the importance of the resume and the information contained in it. Through interviewing two professionals in the industry, I realized the importance of highlighting information that was pertinent to the job I was applying for. This class has expanded my knowledge of the job market, but more importantly, exposed me to the types of information that employers want to see right away. I have taken away knowledge of technical writing as well as ways to use technical writing to begin my career path.